Projects in the Works

It was a couple of months ago, and I was thinking about finishing of DirectFont in a couple weeks (yah right, try a couple more months), and was trying to decide on what to do for next project. I think that everyone here has an ideal game that they want to code. Whether it is to code an existing game but make it better, or do something completely original, we all have some sort of idea in mind about what that is (I might be wrong for everyone, but I think most people are like this).

So of course, I was thinking that I wanted to tackle my ideal project. Then I read an article on one website (I can't remeber the site...dammit), that talked about game design. About to start my ideal game, I thought that this would be extremely useful. Well it was, but not in the way I thought. To summarize, it said that a lot of people jump into developing something that is too massive in scope. And for this reason, hardly ever finish. The article suggested starting really simple, and then moving forward. It basically said, you should do one smaller game, from start to finish. Don't leave anything out. Do it like any real company would manufacture a proper game (with intro screen, credits, high scores, etc.). I totally agree with the article, and it made me reconsider what I wanted to do next. I mean, this thing described me to a tee. I was about to start this huge project, with really no experience making a game...I have the technical background to do it (i.e. I know how to blit and such), but I lack the sense of what makes up a game.

So I've decided to do a clone of an existing game, but with my own little spin. It's a Tetris clone, but will have a log rolling theme (for those of you who don't know what log rolling is, it's when they cut down trees for lumber, and to get them to the mill, they roll them on the rivers). I'm going to call this game LogJammer (for no other reason then that there is a cool George Thorogood called 'Gear Jammer', and I like the name...).

Now, I know it's not much for originality or a drop dead idea, but it is something that I have lots of ideas for and is something that is fairly simple. Because it is single player, there's no networking to worry about. Also, in Tetris, there is no AI to worry about. Making this game will give me an idea of what's involved in completing a game. I mean, I really have no idea right now, and if I'm ever going to make my epic game, I have to start somewhere...

Another benefit to starting on something that is fairly small it that I can develop reusable classes and/or interfaces that I can reuse later on. I plan on doing everything as object-oriented as I can. For example, I want to have a Button class, that is responsible for drawing itself, highlighting itself when the mouse is over it, etc. Of course, this is going to involve alot of infrastructure beneath it. There's going to have to be an object responsible for user input, a object responsable for managing all other objects on the screen, objects responsable for the game's flow (i.e. akin to scripting), and most importantly a system of allowing these objects to communicate with each other. Just trying to figure out this part will be really tough, and it'll be nice to have a small project like LogJammer (that's what I'm going to call it), to test things out and implement with.

Anyway, so that's about it...it's not a huge epic, but it'll be hard enough, and that's fine with me...